The Ice Bucket Challenge Actually Funded a Major ALS Breakthrough

I know that anything people under 30 are into is inherently written off as being useless, but it turns out social media and viral marketing aren’t called that because no one uses these tools or sees this shit.

Remember the summer of ’14, when thousands of people and countless celebrities took part in drowning themselves in ice water to fund ALS research and people wrote it off as some offensive slacktivist bullshit? Well, those people clearly can’t count because the Ice Bucket Challenge raised over $100 million in under a month. The money has been used to fund major research with a breakthrough directly resulting from it this week.

Project MinE – a data-driven initiative – used donations from the online phenomenon to identify a new gene on Monday (July 25). According to ALS Association company executive Brian Frederick, this discovery could potentially lead to a number of new treatment possibilities for the neurological disease, which currently has no cure.

This is a major step forward that shows that despite what bitter old people want you to think, social media, viral marketing, and the internet are very real, very powerful, and can be used to potentially save lives.

Just because you can watch cat videos, porn, and otherwise use the internet to have fun doesn’t mean it doesn’t fucking matter. Don’t listen to bitter old people who hate the internet and research into debilitating diseases.